Roll Your Own Web Video Site with Fliggo

Fliggo is a free Web service that allows you to build your own Video blog or YouTube-like video site within minutes.

There are a number of reasons why you may want to avoid services like YouTube or Vimeo. Both Web video services are great, but YouTube monitors closely for inappropriate content or copyrighted material, so if you believe your video has artistic value or is covered under fair use, you may find yourself at odds with YouTube. Vimeo, too, decided several months ago that movies made from video game footage weren't welcome, so if you're a gamer and looking for somewhere to show off your skills, you'll need to look elsewhere. That's where Fliggo comes in.

Fliggo lets you create your own Web video site and gives you control over who can contribute, who can post video, and who can view the videos that are posted. If you're looking to build a niche-based YouTube, you can do that, and you can limit posting privileges to members that you know, and open up commenting rights to anyone who signs up for an account, or to anyone at all. Similarly, you can control who is allowed to see what, so you can restrict certain videos to registered users and encourage others to sign up in order to see them.

If you're starting a video site dedicated to stop-motion animation, you can make your site as public or private as you choose and control who's allowed to view the videos on it, who's allowed to post videos for others, and who's allowed to comment. If you're building something for a small community, you can password protect the entire page so no one can see or play anything, or you can open your videos up to the world and allow anyone to upload to and comment on media on your site.

As an administrator, you can moderate the media and the users on your Fliggo site. For example, if you allow multiple users to upload video, you can manage the video they upload and remove inappropriate content. You can moderate users, comments, and videos, and set any of them to require approval before they're posted.

You can also customize the design and feel of your Fliggo site. The service offers a number of templates you can choose from, and it also allows you to upload your own images to customize the background or logo of your page. You can choose your own color scheme and heavily modify the layout of your Fliggo page, or you can choose one of the service's default templates and run with it. If you're posting video for a product or a company, the service integrates with Google Analytics so you can see who's viewing the content on your Fliggo site and where your visitors are coming from.

Fliggo is still a new service, and the folks behind it are adding more features on a regular basis. For example, you can't use your own URL with Fliggo and you can't post HD video, but the developers claim these features are coming soon. The service limits uploads to 1GB, and accepts most major video file types. Most users looking for a video host that gives them control over their media may not miss these features immediately, but as they're added, Fliggo's audience will likely grow.